Steve Warmbir: January 2009 Archives

Our embattled governor loves evoking figures from history when talking about his current plight.

Rod Blagojevich said he was thinking of Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. when the FBI came knocking on his door.

Others might believe Boss Tweed, Huey Long or even Billy the Kid might be more appropriate.

You make the call.

Who's the best figure from history to compare our governor with?

President Barack Obama has made hundreds of promises and has a lot on his plate.

What should his first priority be?

Iraq and Afghanistan?

The economy?

Health care?

Let's hear from you.

State Rep. Ken Dunkin couldn't make the historic impeachment vote against Rod Blagojevich.

He was on a Caribbean cruise.

Granted, the vote wasn't exactly a nail-biter, 114-1.

And Dunkin said the trip was long planned.

But it's not like these votes come around every few years.

Not even in Illinois.

It's easy to get confused about the causes of the global economic mess we're in.

It's a subject that's not going away any time soon, and one worth understanding.

From time to time, at the BackTalk Blog, we recommend Web sites worth looking at.

In that spirit, check out The Baseline Scenario, which is written by economists or other specialists with a goal towards clarity.

True, the phrase "writing on economics" and clarity usually don't go hand in hand. Nor does the word entertaining.

But the Baseline Scenario manages, somehow, to do it.